Prayer Focus

April 29, 2024

May 2 is the National Day of Prayer. On this day, we are challenged and called upon to pray for our country, its leaders and citizens. President Harry S. Truman proclaimed a National Day of Prayer to be observed on July 4, 1952. Each year since that date, Americans have observed the day in their own way. The observance moved to the first Thursday in May by President Ronald Reagan and has been proclaimed each year since.

Why is there a National Day of Prayer? Well, most of us actually believe the saying that we have heard for years – “Prayer Changes Things.” Prayer does change things, but it changes them by changing people. What if we changed the focus of the day to pray for ourselves specifically and passionately?

Remember the old spiritual song, “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer! Not my brother nor my sister, but it’s me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer!” Perhaps right here, up close and personal, is where we need to start.

A familiar quote tells us, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” We want the world to change. We pray for that regularly, but what if we prayed for ourselves that we would be the change we want to see in the world? What if we prayed that we would live with such attractive clarity that the world would want to be like us? What if they asked for a reason for the hope they see in us? (1 Peter 3:15).

Jesus calls us to be salt and light – salt that seasons the world and light that shows the way.

Paul Tripp shares with us some really helpful and challenging thoughts about how prayer can change us: “Prayer calls me to abandon the present as my only lens on life and commit to look at life from the perspective of reality.”

What is the most needed, yet the most dangerous, prayer you could ever pray? It is the one prayer that takes you beyond the small-picture hopes and dreams that kidnap so much of your prayer. It is all right to pray about your job, marriage, family, finances, house, children, retirement, vacation, investments, church, health, government, and the weather, but it is not enough. This kind of prayer follows the “right now me” model of prayer. It is about life right here, right now and about what I have come to think that I need right here, right now. Yes, God cares about your present life. He gives you grace for this moment. Right now He is with, for, and in you. But He calls you to view yourself and your life from a perspective that goes far beyond this moment and extends far beyond your ability to diagnose what you truly need.

The one prayer Christ calls us all to pray requires us to let go of our momentary agendas and accept His eternal one. It requires us to surrender our distorted sense of need to His perfect sense of what is best. It is the “forever-you” model of prayer. It requires you to take the long view – to let go of your hold on your life and surrender to the kingship of another. It is captured by a few dangerous words. Why “dangerous”? Because they have the power to turn your life upside down, to make you a very different you than you have been. Here is what we have been called to pray: “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, here, right now in my life as it is in heaven” (see Matt. 6:10). It is only in the context of the surrender of these words that Jesus welcomes you to pray about your right-here, right-now needs.

Here is grace. I don’t have to work to be a king and I don’t have to carry the burdens of a king because I have been gifted with a King. In His Kingdom, I am blessed with every good thing I will ever need, and in my welcome to His Kingdom, I am included in something that will never, ever end. So, pray that prayer because its dangerous grace is really what you (and I) need. Don’t hesitate. Do it now. Why live for what will pass away? Why give your searching heart to what can never satisfy? Why tell yourself that you know what you need, when the One who created you knows better and has promised to deliver?

How about that? What if we took that seriously and prayed that way for ourselves? What if God answered it? What if His Kingdom would come and His will would be done in me, and I was transformed? What if this prayer was prayed and answered for you and me and many others? Wouldn’t our towns and cities change? And then our state and our nation and our world?

I am not saying, “Don’t pray for our country’s leaders.” I am saying start in the part of the world for which we are most responsible – ourselves. Then widen the circle. Changing the world we live in every day starts with us, and the power of God in us will make it spread.